The rankings of the schools are a tool useful and interesting, that must be analyzed in several dimensions and serve as a starting point for each school look inside herself and use the available data to reflect, in the sense of being able to provide a better education service. The exercise of the rankings have changed substantially since it emerged for the first time, and in general it is now possible to launch multiple perspectives on the similarities and disparities of the schools. This possibility is due to the remarkable effort of collection and organization of data developed by the Direction General of Statistics of Education and Science (DGEEC) and the Institute of Evaluation of Education (IAVE), to whom we owe a huge thank you.
what is publish is not the result of any race in which all depart at the same time and arrive in different places. We don’t have medals to offer, nor should we stimulate discussion around the classification of the school of my children and the problem of having become "worse" or "better" than the college The or B. The analysis of the result of the examinations is the tip of the iceberg, the education system is complex and with many steps that are interdependent.
I Will highlight only two aspects that I consider of the greatest importance, and which become even more evident in the light of the data known today: (i) the concern with the "pathways ” direct hit", that call our attention to one of the biggest problems of the education system in Portugal – the lead in conjunction with the learning disabled, and (ii) the characterization of the schools the socio-economic status and the growing awareness that responsibility for learning lies not only in the family. Schools have a vital role and it is urgent to understand why it is that schools inserted in the environments socio-economic similar provide levels of learning, very different.
The data now available show that the school average of 3.Th cycle is attended by only 39% of students classified as "route direct" success, similar to the value of 41% recorded last year. That is, in the academic year 2015/2016, from among the nearly 90,000 students who have taken the exams of 9.Th year only a little more than 35,000 were positive in the tests national, who had never repeated any year between the 7.Th and the 9.No.. Given that about 30% of students repeat at least one year, we have still more than 40% had never repeated, not learned enough to have at least 50% in the examinations of the 9.- Th year.
I remember that the Portuguese legislation (Decree-Law n. º 139/2012 of 5 July) says that "if a student fails to gain the skills default to one year terminal cycle, which, reasonably, compromising the acquisition of knowledge and the development of the capacities set for a year of schooling, the professor of the class, in the 1.Th cycle, the advice of the teachers or the class council, in the 2.º and 3.No. cycles, it may, exceptionally, determine the retention of the student in the same year of schooling". It seems to me that the requirement that "exceptional cases" have been systematically ignored.
The school of today should not be a mere filter of selection of students who are able, giving you the luxury to exclude all that have difficulties. Stopping students is as more easy, less demanding, and also less effective than if you can use a system that you want to teach and contribute to a society that is more and better qualified. The good school is not one that plans new a lot to teach some, but that can’t teach very much and to all of you!
it is Urgent to change this practice, which is still too rooted in the way of operating of the schools. Today we know that not all learn the same way or at the same pace. The students are "difficult", the conditions are never optimal, but still there are few who can do it. The implementation of practices of early prevention of failure, flexibility in the curriculum, management of school time according to the needs of the individual, are some of the various measures that have been studied. There is a vast body of research that dwells in the scientific journals and who stays away from school practice. It is urgent to do drain to the academic knowledge to the life of the schools.
in A second aspect, which stresses the fact of Portugal being a country with low levels of education of the adult population, given that the beneficiaries of the first wave of growth of schooling do not yet have children doing exams. The average years of schooling of the mothers of the students of the 9.- Th year is about ten years old, on average, the mothers, the Portuguese completed a little more than the 3.No. cycle. Portugal is also a country in which many families live with economic difficulties, the middle school receives approximately 45% of students with Social Action School (ASE). Of mention, that among the public schools (excluding Madeira and Azores due to lack of data), only 18% of the basic schools and 34% of the secondary may be considered as embedded in socio-economic favourable. The vast majority of the schools work as it is with young people coming from underprivileged families, both economically and as of the qualification of parent.
however, the source family is no fatalism. The social ascension by means of a better education has been a constant reality in Portugal. There are still a few years the levels of illiteracy were huge, and today we already have about 40% of young people entering higher education courses. Many of these young people are of course are from families with skills much lower than their.
Returning to the data that we occupy, it is possible to verify that there are 176 groups with 3.Th cycle, inserted in means unfavorable, but that can have students whose average was at least five points higher than the average achieved by schools with similar characteristics.
These are the schools that contribute actively to improve the education of their students and must be praised, loved and studied. We have to understand in depth what they do to fight the adversity, and to disseminate these good practices by schools whose students continue to hit the wall of failure. Each school has an obligation to reflect and to seek to develop solutions that may work in your environment, with the resources provided to them. As I said a director of a grouping that, since 2003, aims to combat academic failure, improving the school environment and learning, "we have autonomy and means to make different, schools only have to know how to use them."
In conclusion, all the information about the functioning of schools is useful, but we must go beyond the results. To know the economic and social contexts, educational practices, the organization of times and spaces of school, the management practices and motivation of teachers, students and the educational community are factors with as much or greater importance. There is that you know how to use and process the information, and return it to the educational community so that we can continue to have an education system increasingly better and more comprehensive. The rankings are part of this collection of information, which is increasingly used not to assign medals, but to equip decision-makers and users from various angles of vision.
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